CHAPTER XVIII
THE IMMORTAL MOMENT
That which Lenine had hoped for some twelve years, which the Parson and Vassie had first feared and then laughed at, which Ishmael himself had hardly thought of, and then merely to dismiss with a smile, had come to pass—so simply, with such a logical though quiet following of effect on various causes, that it was no wonder Ishmael felt enmeshed in the web of something it was not worth fighting to cut away. At first, on the heels of the miller's rejoicing and Phoebe's clinging content, he had been overwhelmed by a dense cloud of depression—a sense as of being caught in something soft and too sweet that would not let him go and into which he sunk the more deeply for his instinctive protest. Also the sheer impossibility of the thing affected him with a dream-like belief that it could not really have happened, or that at least something must occur to dissolve it. Yet nothing did, not even the Parson's frankly-expressed dismay.
Ishmael was very young, and in no sense a man of the world, and when he thought of what lay behind that kiss he had given Phoebe he felt her innocence had a right to demand of him that at least he should not retract what she had built upon it. Also, Penwith being a very narrow and intimate track of land, the scandal for her if he had withdrawn and let the miller blaze his version abroad would have never been lived down. A country which is a blind-alley has the advantage of immunity from tramps, but it has the disadvantages also of a place which cannot be a highway to other places. Talk, interest, all the thoughts and emotions of life, of necessity beat back on themselves instead of passing on and dying, or being swamped in the affairs of the great world. Phoebe, as the miller knew, was already the subject of censure among the stiffer matrons, whose sons were wont to hang round the mill like bees, and in his expressions of approval to Ishmael was mingled a subtle strain of warning, almost of menace. And to himself as the days went by and Phoebe was always there for him to see and caress when he felt inclined, her yielding sweetness ever ready for him to draw on, her gentle stupidity hidden under her adoration, he admitted that he did not altogether want to withdraw. After all, what did it matter? Phoebe had many refinements of heart and temper which surely could be held to outweigh her little ignorances, and now that, with the removal of Blanche, the outer world was, he told himself, cut off from him, he refused to see that to ally himself with the Lenines of the mill mattered as much as the Parson, in his old-fashioned Toryism, seemed to think. A woman takes her husband's position; and as to that, what, he asked bitterly, was his position that any woman should want to share it? Phoebe did want to; she had shown all her heart so plainly in that cry—genuine in that she believed it herself; and Phoebe was kind and perilously sweet…. The days went on, and Vassie's letter of argument and protest was less determined than it would have been if she herself had not been engrossed in her own affairs. And stronger even that the dread of hurting Phoebe, of the terrible scenes that would of necessity occur, than his own loneliness, was the enemy within himself that every time he caressed Phoebe mounted to his brain and told him it was, after all, well worth while.
It fell to the Parson's bitter lot to marry them in the early autumn of that year. Archelaus had now been away a year, and he had neither come back nor written, and not till several months later did he suddenly reappear, after the habit of the born rover.
They were months of mingled wonder and dismay for Ishmael. He had married a girl who had only one talent, but that was the oldest in the world—she was a born lover. She, who in many ways was so startlingly lacking in refinement, had a genius for the little lures, the ways with hand and eye, of voice and gesture, that make of love an art. In the ordinary intimacies of marriage, the blunting intimacies of daily life, she had no discrimination; Ishmael, had he been inclined to idealise her, would not have been spared the realisation that even as the grosser male she looked unbeautiful at times, needed to send clothes to the wash, and was warned every few weeks, by an unbecoming limpness in her hair, that it was time for soap and water to combat natural greasiness. She made no attempt to keep up the illusion which, even while it is admitted to be such, yet achieves its object. She would have thought it silly. But when it came to the rites of love she was inspired and could not make a false move. A thousand little ways of her own, cat-like rubs of her sleek head, turns of her limbs, inspirations of withheld kisses and in the same breath approaches that held an eternally child-like quality in their submission—there was no faint tone of the age-old gamut to which she did not give its keenest value.
The month spent at the genteel resort of Torquay was to Ishmael a fevered medley. His days were full of distaste—at her predilections for the young clerks who eyed her on the sea-front, for cheap jewellery and casual friends picked up at the hotel, at the bland superficiality of her mind; and now and again this distaste was shot through with moments of acute fears when he realised, startled to it by some blunt display of the ugly things of life, that to this he must accustom himself for the rest of his days; and that he would grow only too deadly accustomed, to the stifling of other ideals, he foresaw. These were his days, yet he felt remorseful at his own spirit of criticism, because she thought him so god-like, and in many little womanly ways showed an unselfish consideration that humbled him in his own eyes and exalted her. Of the nights, even when there was no passion between them, she made such a delight with her childish clinging, her soft nestling against him, that he would hold his breath to listen to her quiet breathing and move a little away as though in sleep, so as to feel her kitten-like, half-unconscious wriggle into the curve of his arm again. It was sweet at such times to feel such utter dependence upon him as the protective male, and the best in him was stirred to response. The next morning she might jar again from the hour of getting up in their ugly hotel room, through the expedition with which they would try and beguile the day, to the dinner, at which her conversation was always most noticeably trifling; but he always, to her surprise, let her go to bed alone, and came up much later to find the old magic upon her once more like dew.
It was late autumn when they went back to Cloom, and under John-James' watchful care the harvest was all in; he awaited them at the station in the smart new trap that had been a present from the miller, and Katie Jacka, with a tight-lipped smile upon her face and a heart full of contempt for a mistress whom privately she considered no better than herself, was hovering between kitchen and passage when they drove up, with a large bouquet of bought flowers swaddled in a stiff paper frill ready as an offering. Boase came over after supper, and when Phoebe, piqued by a conversation which she could not share and—what she resented still more—by the efforts of the two men to include her in it, had gone upstairs, then Ishmael and the Parson sat and smoked and chatted, and for the first time all the past month lifted its deadweight and life seemed more as it had been in the old days.
It was in the winter that Archelaus reappeared, and the first that Cloom heard of it was a casual word dropped by Katie as she waited at table. "So Cap'n Arch'las is back among us," she remarked cheerfully, after the manner of Cornish servants, who see no harm in imparting items of gossip as they hand a dish; "they do say he'm rare and changed, though 'zackly how I don't knaw. Simme 'tes enough to make a man come home a nigger, going so much to the lands where the folk are all black."
Ishmael was startled by the news, but, to hide the fact, began to joke Katie on her ideas of the population of the American continent, when a little sound from Phoebe caught his attention. She had gone very white, and she tried to push her chair away from the table, making a gesture as though she wanted to be free of its confining edge; but her hands seemed too weak to accomplish the act, and she let them fall into her lap. Ishmael sprang up and went round to her, sharply bidding the staring Katie to bring cold water; in a moment or two Phoebe had conquered her faintness and was smiling timidly at him. When he was alone and out of doors he thought over the incident, but without exaggerating it to himself. He had always guessed that Archelaus had at one time been attracted by Phoebe; he supposed that her refusal of him was at the back of the former's departure. Now that Archelaus had returned it was not unnatural, considering her marriage and the bad blood between himself and his brother, that she should feel nervous. He was sorry for her, and wondered, not for the first time, whether it would not be possible, now he himself was less green and prickly, and had settled into a scheme of life that need not, ill-feeling apart, exclude Archelaus, to become better friends or at least more tolerant of each other. He suggested his idea to Phoebe, though characteristically he did not refer to her attack of faintness. She looked at him in a scared way and then murmured something about thinking it was best to wait till Archelaus made the first advance, and to this Ishmael rather reluctantly agreed.
They had not long to wait; the next evening saw Archelaus at Cloom. An oddly-altered Archelaus, so much was soon plain. Even in appearance he seemed changed; something of his golden beauty had tarnished at last, and a faint grizzle showed here and there in his curly hair, while the ruddy face had become weather-beaten. He talked a good deal—about his adventures in California, his bad luck with the gold, and the beauty of the Californian women, especially those with a Spanish strain. Of these last he spoke so freely, notably of some camp-followers, that Ishmael reminded him sharply of Phoebe's presence. Archelaus glanced from one to the other, from Ishmael's irritated eyes to Phoebe's averted cheek, with a slight smile, before answering.
"Ah! I forgot that Phoebe's not like that kind o' women a man gets used to out there," he said slowly. "Besides, of course, she'm a lady now…."
The apology was worse than the offence; but Ishmael swallowed his anger for Phoebe's sake, though he was vexed with her too for staying there to hang upon Archelaus's doubtful talk. Soon after, when Phoebe had brewed hot milk-punch and it had been drunk by the two men, Archelaus rose to go. He went out to see if his trap were ready, and Ishmael went also. The boy had gone home for the night, and Ishmael lit a lantern and went into the stable to fetch the horse. He supposed Archelaus was with him, but found he had not followed so far; neither was he by the cart. Ishmael put the horse in and brought it through into the courtyard, and the same moment saw Archelaus appearing from the kitchen door.
"Just haven a bit of chat wi' Katie," said Archelaus. "She'm a rare one for gossip, she is." Then, as he pretended to busy himself with something at the horse's head, he spoke again.
"Ishmael," he began, "I knaw how it is wi' you. You think on when my fancy was took by your lil' missus, and you don't knaw how I'm thinken about things. Well, I'm a rough chap, but I'm honest, b'lieve, and I can tell 'ee there's no wound in my heart, and the soreness there was against 'ee has gone in the sun out in those lands…. Will 'ee shake hands and let I be a friend to you and your missus as a brother should?" He held out his hand as he spoke, and Ishmael found himself staring at it in the uncertain light of the lamps. The next moment a flood of self-reproach at his own hesitation swept over him; he put out his hand and took his brother's. Archelaus gave such a vigorous wringing that Ishmael could not keep back a little exclamation, and his fingers were numb when they were released.
"Bit too strong, am I?" asked Archelaus with a friendly laugh. "My muscles have got so tough I don't rightly knaw how hard I grip." He swung himself up into the cart, and from that elevation looked down at Ishmael with a nod of farewell.
Ishmael went into the house, where he found Phoebe still sitting in the parlour, her hands folded on her lap, staring in front of her. She gave a start when he spoke to her, and when he told her of his pact with Archelaus chilled him by her scant enthusiasm. They went to bed, and as they lay side by side in the darkness there was a constraint between them there had not been even when they had quarrelled or his occasional fits of irritation had made her rail at him.
As the weeks wore on they both seemed to become used to the occasional but unwonted presence of Archelaus about the place, though Phoebe always resented it oddly. Yet it was a friendly presence; he was ready to help on the farm with advice and even with his strong muscles if need be, and the world at large was much edified by the reconciliation.
"A gentle little wife like that is such a softening influence" was the general verdict … and Ishmael, irked by the strain between them to a sudden passion of distaste for what he felt had been his weakness, had instituted what was for those days a startling innovation—that of a separate bedroom for himself. He guessed that Phoebe almost hated him for it, yet he had come suddenly to that point when he sickened at over-intimacy, when he realised that the passion in him had betrayed him, so that he felt the only salvation for his mind lay in crushing it. He had sold himself, but at least he could refrain from taking his price. So he told himself and so he meant, yet when, as on a night when Phoebe, shedding resentment for a wistful tenderness, had won him to a triumph of passion once again, there was mingled with his sense of having failed himself a certain relief in the acknowledgment that this thing still held sweets for him….
With the spring the affairs on the farm took up Ishmael's interest more and more, and he was able to find solace for the deadening knowledge of his mistaken marriage in the things that lay so near his heart. He told himself that it was here, in the soil, and the warm, gentle cattle and the growing things, that his keenest as well as his truest joys were to be found, not knowing that even while he thought it Phoebe held that which was to thrill him as never yet anything in life had had power to do.
She told him of it one night when he went up to bed late, thinking and hoping she would be asleep. But she called out to him as he passed her door. He went in and found her sitting up, looking like a child among the big white pillows, her brown hair about her wide eyes. He was struck by it and spoke to her gently, telling her to lie down and go to sleep. Instead of obeying she held out her hands and drew him down towards her.
"I want to whisper, Ishmael," she said, as she had been wont to say when a little girl and she had had something of tremendous interest to impart. He humoured her, and, putting his arm round her, gathered her against him and said that he was listening. She kept a shy silence for a second after that and then whispered. Ishmael caught the few words, and at first they seemed to him to convey something incredible, though he had often thought about this very thing, wondered if and when he should hear of it. He was very gentle with her, but said little, only he stayed by her till she had fallen asleep, and then he disengaged himself and, going quietly out of the room, opened the front door and went out into the garden.
It was the darkest hour of the night, only the stars shone brightly, and not till he was upon the pale clouds of the drifted narcissi could he tell they were there, not till their scent came up at him. The night was very still as well as dark, but Ishmael noted neither circumstance. His own soul held all of sound and colour and light for him, and he recked of nothing external. This news, the simplest, oldest thing in the way of news that there is, seemed to him never to have been told to anyone before—never, at least, to have been so wonderful. All the beauties of Cloom, of life, all the trouble his own short span had felt, all the future held, seemed to fall into place and be made worth while. This was what he had lived for without knowing it—not to make Cloom finer for himself, not to save his own soul or carve out a life for himself, but this—to make of himself this mysterious immortality. Always he had waited for "something" to happen, always at moments of keenest pleasure he had been conscious there was more he did not feel: depths unplumbed, heights unscaled, some master-rapture that would explain all the others and that he never came upon. Even beauty had had this sting for him; he had always felt that, however lovely a thing were, there was something more beautiful just round the corner, for ever slipping ahead, like a star reflected in a rain-filled rut. Now for the first time he was aware of a dizzying sensation as though for one moment the gleam had stayed still, as if Beauty for a flash were not withdrawing herself, as though time for one moment stood, and that moment was self-sufficient, free of the perpetual something that was always just ahead—more, actually capturing that something. The moment had the quality of immortality, although it reeled and was caught up again in the inexorable march, but, drunken with it, he stayed tingling in the cold dawn.
And if, mixed with that draught, there were this much of venom—that he rejoiced at having at last so ousted Archelaus, in the fact that indeed flesh of his flesh should inherit after him and Archelaus be outcast for ever, at least in that first rapture he was unaware of it.